E! Houston style

Umm, if you were looking for Girls Gone Wild, sorry--this is a family-oriented blog. If you want that sort of thing, you'll have to find Skibby's blog (warning: tasteless).

Here in Houston, I don't have to leave the house to be entertained. I can't recommend yesterday's entertainment, er addiction, since I took a lot of heat over wasting most of the day on Rubik's cube. Here is a sampling of what else is on the docket:

First, there's X-box 360 (currently out of service), X-box, GameCube, and Nintendo 64. Most of these are way too advanced for me, since my nephews can smoke me in basically any game we play. Right now they are into Guitar Hero II and Rainbow 6 Vegas on X-box 360. I fancy myself a bit of a musician, since in real life I play a 5-string Carvin bass reasonably well, but I worry about trying Guitar Hero II since it involves holding down buttons with your left hand and clicking on the strum bar with your right hand. Extra points for using the whammie bar on longer notes.

Then there are the wiener dogs, Ringo and Cotton, who are thoroughly entertaining day and night. Movie night every night on the home theater (playing tonight: Spiderman 3), multiple computers, musical instruments, baseballs to throw, golf in the garage (a net) and in the back yard (usually whiffle, but occasionally the real thing just to break the monotony). My nephew Caulin has a large iTunes library, so we get a custom CD to listen to almost every day (yesterday was Earth, Wind, and Fire; today is classic rock anthems like Toto, Boston, Kansas, and Aerosmith).

For you Cirque du Soleil fans, we even get a taste of the diabolo from La Nouba, contortion from Kooza, and hand balancing on canes from Varekai. Don't believe me? Watch this:

That was my 11 year old nephew Kyle, who is a gymnast and budding Cirque performer. We took him to La Nouba at Disneyworld 3 years ago, and he was mesmerized by the Diabolo act. He bought the DVD and a diabolo (a sort of horizontally spinning top that can be thrown from a string held between two sticks), and by the end of our week at Disneyworld, he had memorized the act. Since then, he has been to 6 other Cirque shows, and has learned parts of 3 other acts. This particular video shows part of the hand balancing act from Varekai. DOC'S ADVICE: if you haven't seen Cirque (where have you been?), go! Or come to Houston and watch parts of it for free.

Since there's so much entertainment around, I haven't had much time to set up my secret training plan for the year, but I'm almost done. Sorry, if I told you any more, I'd have to erase your memory (remember that Haitian guy reaching for your face like he does in Heroes?).

Tomorrow: what I'm thankful for...